"Dial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Captain assured us that it was the best time-keeper in the world. It only requires winding once a month; used to show the day of the month, but some meddler disarranged that part of the machinery. The dial plate is of some white metal, brilliant and silvery. Captain Knox said it was brass, but I have seen things look more brazen that were ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... in the sun where the dial face moves. I in the shadow where Time stays still. To me it is every day a new tale,' ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the doctors come near him, and when Malcolm entered there was no one in the room but Mrs. Courthope. The shadow had crept far along the dial. His face had grown ghastly, the skin had sunk to the bones, and his eyes stood out as if from much staring into the dark. They rested very mournfully on Malcolm for a few moments, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... when I say she saw anything, I mean she became conscious of it. Presently, however, she did perceive something that was familiar, and if such a thing had been possible her face would have flushed with pleasure. This familiar object was a sun-dial in the middle of a wide grass-mound. The sun-dial was of brass. It was very old, and some of the figures on the round plate were nearly obliterated by time and weather; but Miss Amanda recognized it. It was the same sun-dial she had always known in the home where she had been born. ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... watch room; the lamp was dying away, the thirteen with pale expectant faces, now shadowed by fear, now lighted with hope, were motionless. With his face bowed upon his arms, Harwood had neither looked up nor spoken since Fannie slept. The old clock had struck each hour from the dial of time into the abyss of the past. Never before had time seemed to them so ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... do the servants, that he has no shadow; and we should think he shouldn't, because our ghosts hereaway have none that ever I heard of. But that's a lie of their foolish religion; for I could swear I one night saw his shadow flit like that of a sun-dial, when the sun's in a hurry to get the curtains round his head, away past the east end of the house, and disappear in a moment. But I'll tell you what, Aminadab, he may, like our spirits, be a shadow himself. I could hardly speak for fear, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... motive power; homes are the primary meetings. They would be little kingdoms, of great might! I wish women would be content with their mainspring work, and not want to go out and point the time upon the dial!" ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... LAST.—Watches Superseded. The Dollar Time Keeper.—A Perfect Gem.—Elegantly cased in Oriode of Gold, Superior Compass attachment, Enameled Dial, Silver and Brass Works, glass crystal, size of Ladies' Watch. Will denote correct time, warranted five years, superb and showy case, entirely of metal. This is no wood Compass. Is entirely new, patented. 6500 sold in three weeks. Only $1 each, three for $2, in neat case, mailed ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... carefully. I got Roper of the DAILY TELEPHONE and Burkett of the DIAL to try over a silly-season discussion of State Help for Mothers, and I put a series of articles on eugenics, upon the fall in the birth-rate, and similar topics in the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... as follows: an ingenious registering device waits, as it were, on all the movements of the operator, with the result that when he has approached as close to the end of the line as he dare go, he has merely to glance at a cylindrical dial in front of him. The pointer on this dial signifies to him which of the "justifying keys" he must depress. He touches them in accordance therewith, and the line is justified, or rather it will be justified when, as will ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... obelisk we know of was that raised by Rameses, King of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war. Augustus erected an obelisk at Rome, in the Campus Martius, which served to mark the hours on an horizontal dial, drawn on the pavement. This obelisk was brought from Egypt, and was said to have been formed by Sesostris, near a thousand years before Christ. It was used by Manlius for the same purpose for which it was originally destined, namely, to measure the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... might well be full. It was a barren, neglected garden enough, but still full of charm and delight, being a garden. There was a fine fragrance of grapes through the undergrowth, but the whole place was completely ruined; a little snake slid from the broken base of a sun-dial; the tall chimneys of the house were already beginning to crumble, and birds and squirrels lived in their crevices and flitted about their lofty tops. At some distance an old negro was singing,—it must have been Milton himself, still unbesought by his dependents, and the song was full of strange, ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ground should be damp; some paint-boxes of the little boys'; a box of fish-hooks for Solomon John; an ink-bottle, carefully done up in a great deal of newspaper, which was fortunate, as the ink was oozing out; some old magazines, and a blacking-bottle; and at the bottom a sun-dial. It was all very entertaining, and there seemed to be something for every occasion but the present. Old Mr. Bromwick did not wonder the basket was so heavy. It was all so interesting that nobody but the Tremletts went ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... the piazza been continued on the other this would have been one of the noblest quadrangles in the metropolis. Previously to the erection of the present mass of huts and sheds, the area was neatly gravelled, had a handsome dial in the centre, and was railed in on all sides, at the distance of sixty feet from the buildings. The south side was bounded by the garden wall of Bedford-House, the town house of the noble family of that name; and along this wall only were the market booths. But the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... has a clock with a dial thirty-eight feet across. In any other country this would be the largest clock in the world. In America it is just a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... live in deeds, not years; in thought, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... of brake, glen, and dingle, might be found. Read Hall was a large and commodious mansion, forming, with a centre and two advancing wings, three sides of a square, between which was a grass-plot ornamented with a dial. The gardens were laid out in the taste of the time, with trim alleys and parterres, terraces and steps, stone statues, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... seems to know, but it is an institution which dies hard, and some one pays the expense of keeping it alight. A belfry is a very useful adjunct to a town. If the writer ever plans a modern city he will plant a belfry in the very centre, with four clock-faces on it, a sun-dial, a thermometer, and a peal of bells. You find all these things on the belfry of Bethune, and altogether it is the most picturesque, satisfying, and useful belfry the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Skipper said; "He vanished with the coal we burn; Our dial marks full steam ahead. Our speed is timed to half a turn. Sure as the tidal trains we ply 'Twixt port ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... amid the scenes of life, With hoary locks and beard of silvery grey, And furrows deep upon his sage-like brow. Beside him was a dial of huge size, Whereby he shewed the minutes as they grew To hours, and days, and years in silent haste. He was in wistful mood, and, while I saw, Did point his finger to the midnight hour. 'Twas in a dream this wondrous scene appeared, Or in that stupor which is known between The rule of sleep ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... Babbage's difference machine. Imagine a number of striking clocks placed in a row, each with only an hour hand, and with only the striking apparatus retained. Let the hand of the first clock be turned. As it comes opposite a number on the dial the clock strikes that number of times. Let this clock be connected with the second in such a manner that by each stroke of the first the hand of the second is moved from one number to the next, but can ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... appear troublesome to his readers. In the account of Hezekiah he mentions that the king depended on Isaiah the prophet, by whom he inquired and knew of all future events,[3] and he recounts also the miracle of putting back the sun-dial. For the rest, he says that, by common consent, Isaiah was a divine and wonderful man in foretelling the truth, "and in the assurance that he had never written what was false, he wrote down his prophecies and left them ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... in the bud, teaches the point how to move, When necessity's silent law, the steadfast, the changeless, Stirred up billows more free, e'en in the bosom of man,— When the sense, unerring, and true as the hand of the dial, Pointed only to truth, only to what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as true as the sun to the dial," replied Nell; "and I tell you more, he's wid her this minnit behind your father's orchard! Ay! an' if you wish you may see them together wid your own eyes, an' sure if you don't b'lieve me, you'll b'lieve them. But, Meehaul, take care of him; for he has his fire-arms; if ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was lost in the increased confusion of his senses, but through that mental turmoil tore the thought of Graham and his intention of going to the Cedars. With shaking fingers he dragged out his watch. He couldn't read the dial. He braced his hands against the table, thrust back his chair, and arose. The room tumbled about him. Before his eyes the dancers made long nebulous bands of colour in which nothing had form or coherence. Instinctively he ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Placid, with its shining waves, its islands, and the stately Whiteface; and to the south, the heaven-reflecting Lake of the Blessed, crowned by the noble dome of Tahawus, and his splendid retinue, Colden, McMartin, McIntire, Wallface, Dial Mountain, Nipple Top, and Moriah. To the east and west are wooded hills, completing the panorama, and enclosing a scene as enchanting as any single one the writer ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... frame, placed close to the wall, and holding a stout wooden panel. In the centre of this, at the height of a man's chest, was a stuffed leathern pad, on which was painted a grotesque face, evidently intended for that of a negro, and above it was a dial bearing numbers that ranged from 1 to 300. The single pointer on this dial indicated the number 173, a figure at which ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... for a closer inspection of the safe, and, as his flashlight played over the single dial, he shook his head whimsically. No, it would be hardly true to call that modern; it was only an ancient monstrosity, a helpless thing at the mercy ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the building is the work of Morwent, who was Abbot from 1421-1437. The rich front of what Bonner called "Saracenic work," was formerly disfigured by an uninteresting dial with the motto Pereunt et imputantur. This was removed at the Restoration, when the canopies were restored, and niches filled with statues by Redfern. Over the doorway in the centre, stand St. Peter and St. Paul, and the four Evangelists. Below are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... heaps, and a little doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. What it had been in past ages, I know not: probably a hold in time of war; but now-a-days it bore an illegible dial-plate in its upper parts, and near ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... several minutes. Nervously the doctor glanced at his wrist watch. He barely stifled a cry of amazement. From the face of the luminous dial, long streamers of faintly phosphorescent light were streaming. He whirled to meet an attack from the rear but he was too late. Even as he turned the muzzle of a pistol pressed into his back and a voice spoke ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... easy to preach. In the course of my sermon, I know not why, I was led to Speak about the endless misery of hell; and some who were present said I asserted, "That there was a great clock in hell, with a large dial, but no hands to mark the progress of time: it had a pendulum which swung sullenly and slowly from side to side, continually saying, 'Ever! never!' ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... Church of Christ that gathers here—ray out into the darkness of Manchester? Socially, intellectually, morally, in the civic life, in the national life, are Christian people in the van? They ought to be. There is a church clock in our city which has a glass dial that professes to be illuminated at night, so that the passer-by may tell the hour; but it is generally burning so dimly that nobody can see on its grimy face what o'clock it is. That is like a great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... executed at eight that morning. Again and again the people turned to look at the clock. It hung by the side of the dial in the cupola of the old Town Hall. How slowly moved its tardy figures! God forgive them, there were those in that crowd who would have helped forward, if they could, its passionless pulse. And a few minutes ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... roof Kennedy took from his pocket a little instrument with a needle which trembled back and forth over a dial. It was nearing the time for the start of the day's flying, and the aeroplanes were getting ready. Kennedy was calmly biting a cigar, casting occasional glances at the needle as it oscillated. Suddenly, as Williams rose in the Wright machine, the needle swung quickly and pointed ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... in voice and manner, he drew out his watch, and held it aslant that the light might strike upon the dial. "'T is after six," he remarked as he put it away, "and I am yet a mile from the house." The wine that he had poured for himself had been standing, untouched, upon the keg beside him. He took it up and drank it off; then wiped ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... swagger and 'show off,' as children say. He shambled up to one of the 'try your strength' machines: the figure of a circus clown, with a buffer to punch at in the neighbourhood of his midriff, and a dial on his chest to indicate the weight of the blow administered. The Slasher tossed a penny to the proprietor of the machine and waved him on one side; but the man stood in front of the contrivance and besought ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... it wakes me up sometimes, and ye're but a boy to me. I should have a son pretty nigh as old as you if he'd lived, but they listed him for a so'ger—he come back home though, for all he had but one poor leg. He always said he'd be buried near the sun-dial he used to climb upon when he was a baby, did my poor boy, and his words come true—you can see the place with your own eyes; we've kept the turf up, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... them to the edge of the first crump-hole, and glancing every few yards at the luminous dial, they kept on ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... generations having settled there in pools and rusted them. The panes themselves had either lost their shine altogether or become iridescent as a peacock's tail. In the middle of the porch was a vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say, 'Here's your fine model dial; here's any time for any man; I am an old dial; and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... love of me. As you remember your parents, remember me; As you remember your house and houseladder, remember me; When thunder rumbles, remember me; When wind whistles, remember me; When the heavens rain, remember me; When cocks crow, remember me; When the dial-bird tells its tales, remember me; When you look up at the sun, remember me; When you look up at the moon, remember me, For in that self-same moon I am there. Cluck! cluck! soul of Somebody come hither to me. I do not mean to let you have my soul, Let ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... buildings were low and irregular, one portion of the roof thatched, another tiled. In the quadrangle there was an old-fashioned garden, with geometrical flower-beds, a yew tree hedge, and a stone sun-dial in the centre. A peacock stalked about in the morning light, and greeted the newly risen sun with a discordant scream. Presently a man came out of a half glass door under a verandah which shaded one side of the quadrangle, and strolled about the garden, stopping here and there to cut a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sad picture. The two were as the type of Nature and Art, the married pair, here at strife—still together, but only the more apart—Oberon and Titania, with ruin all about them. Through the straggling branches appeared the tottering dial of Time where not a sun-ray could reach it; for Time himself may well go to sleep where progress is but disintegration. Time himself is nothing, does nothing; he is but the medium in which the forces work. Time no more cures our ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial face and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... of the material of this book was originally printed in the form of articles in "The Dial," "The New Republic," and "The Seven Arts." Thanks are due the editors of these periodicals for permission to recast and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... may be by the calendar of years You are the elder man; but 'tis the sun Of knowledge on the mind's dial shining bright, And chronicling deeds and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... account of the Stabian baths, we should mention that under the portico, near the entrance to the men's baths, was found a sun-dial, consisting as usual of a half circle inscribed in a rectangle, and with the gnomon in perfect preservation. It was supported by lion's feet and elegantly ornamented. On its base was an Oscan inscription, which has been ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... your body is to real sensations—the nearer it is to sleep—the better and more vivid will be your impressions." He pressed several buttons, and twisted a dial ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... fact, to consider the pointed peak as the stylus of an immense sun-dial, the shadow of which pointed on one given day, like the inexorable finger of fate, to the yawning chasm which led into the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... old watch, around the dial of which sparkle diamonds, and on the back the motto, executed in the same precious stones, "Vous me faites oublier les heures," once adorned the slender waist of some dainty dame,—a nuptial gift. The silvery sound of its bell often reminded her of the flight ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... into the shop for half an hour, or thereabouts, then to the tavern, where he stays till two in the morning, gets drunk, and is led home by the watch, and so lies till eleven again; and thus he walks round like the hand of a dial. And what will it all come to?—they'll certainly break, that you may be sure of; they can't hold ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... both notions distinct; and their intimate connection is shown in this, that five yards are traversed in a certain time, and that five minutes are measured by the motion of an index over some fraction of a yard upon the dial. ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... For Katrina's Window For the Friends at Hurstmont The Sun-Dial at Morven The Sun-Dial at Wells College To Mark Twain Stars and the Soul To Julia Marlowe To Joseph Jefferson The Mocking-Bird The Empty Quatrain Pan Learns Music The Shepherd of Nymphs Echoes from the Greek Anthology One World Joy and Duty The ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... over, but there was no superscription on its exterior to offer any clue as to its owner, and taking it with him to the window, he pushed the lattice open and removed the shutter. The dial pointed to six, and the sun had risen. He peered closely into the roll he held in his hand, and pressing the packet slightly open, he slowly deciphered the writing. It was that of a lawyer. The first word he encountered was his own name, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Mr. Robert Beaufort, indeed, always meant to do what was right —in the eyes of the world! He had no other rule of action but that which the world supplied; his religion was decorum—his sense of honour was regard to opinion. His heart was a dial to which the world was the sun: when the great eye of the public fell on it, it answered every purpose that a heart could answer; but when that eye was invisible, the dial was mute—a piece ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock, pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family appeared on the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the battery, according to the registering gauge," murmured the lad. "I can't understand it." He reversed the current, thinking the wires might have become crossed, but the machine would move neither backward nor forward, yet the dial indicated that there was enough power stored away to send it a hundred ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... Devote one's self sin doni. Devoted sindona. Devotion sindono. Devotee religiulo. Devoid religia. Devour mangxegi. Dew roso. Dexterity lerteco. Diadem diademo. Diagonal diagonalo. Diagram diagramo. Dial ciferplato. Dialect dialekto. Dialogue dialogo. Diameter diametro. Diamond diamanto. Diarrhoea lakso. Dice ludkuboj. Dictate dikti. Dictation diktato. Dictator diktatoro. Dictionary vortaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the addition of ist: as, psalm, psalmist; botany, botanist; dial, dialist; journal, journalist. These denote persons devoted to, or skilled in, the subject expressed ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... attraction rays, the second the repulsion force. The third dial regulates the orange-ray by which you will be returned to Earth. The fourth switch directs the electrical bolt that destroyed New York City. Next it is a device that we have never had occasion to use. It releases the Krangor-wave ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... dial beneath the counter, warned them that they were as cut off from the luxuriance outside as if they were viewing a scene on Mars or Sargol from their present position. To go beyond the shielding walls of the spacer ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... general's servant, sat asleep in the corner, and two aides slumbered on the floor, tired out, I fancy. I walked to and fro over the creaking boards, and watched the Dutch clock. As it struck eleven the figure of Time, seated below the dial, swung a scythe and turned a tiny hour-glass. A bell rang; an orderly came in and woke up an aide: "Despatch for West Point, sir, in haste." The young fellow groaned, stuck the paper in his belt, and went out for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the gauges marked seven fathoms, and the dial finger slowly rose to eight, then stopped suddenly. Jerry had ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... his work must be forthcoming. There can be no question of failure, no dallying with the subject, however elaborate or unpromising it may appear. A decision must be come to, and that rapidly; and there the artist sits, his watch hung up before him, "one eye on the dial and the other on the drawing-paper," knowing that at the appointed hour the work must be ready for the messenger. Thus the majority of his four thousand designs have been greatly hurried—hurried in thought as well as in execution. Many ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... being the solemn chant of the sixth century to which mountain folk for generations adapted the words of their traditional hymns, is in swift tempo, almost jazz such as can be heard at any point on your radio dial any ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... publication of a little book entitled 'Euphues and His Anatomie of Wit.' 'Euphues' means 'the well-bred man,' and though there is a slight action, the work is mainly a series of moralizing disquisitions (mostly rearranged from Sir Thomas North's translation of 'The Dial of Princes' of the Spaniard Guevara) on love, religion, and conduct. Most influential, however, for the time-being, was Lyly's style, which is the most conspicuous English example of the later Renaissance ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... at the door of which he took his seat from morning till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep in the shade of a large tree; so that the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has his adherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather his opinions. ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... cheerful and delightful figures at Chartres is that of the very tall angel holding a sun dial, on the corner of the South tower. A certain optimistic inconsequence is his chief characteristic, as if he really believed that the hours bore more of happiness than of sorrow to ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... but fray their way along somewhat narrow paths over the great spaces of the quiet realm of nature. La Beauce, vast enough to present at once every phase of weather, its one landmark the twin spires of Chartres, salient as the finger of a dial, guiding, by their change of perspective, victor or vanquished on his way, offered room enough [20] for the business both of peace and war to those enamoured of either. When Gaston, after a brief absence, was unable to find his child's garden-bed, that was only because in a fine June ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, of phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. In like manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at the Transcendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals betray), Edgar Poe, a literary Erinaceus, wellnigh exhausted his supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward which he felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, in ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... Flora; but having found in it also so many of the stately palm trees, I have called it the Glen of Palms. Peculiar indeed, and romantic too, is this new-found watery glen, enclosed by rocky walls, "Where dial-like, to portion time, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... shade, and took in a mouldy pavilion in white marble with broken windows, and a Temple of Love that dated back to the sixteenth century, and rowed on an ornamental water in a real gondola that leaked like sixty, and landed on a rushy island where there was a sun-dial and a stone seat that the Druids or somebody had considerately placed there in the year one, and talked of course, and grew confidential, until finally I was calling her Verna (which was her pet name) and telling her how the other fellow had married my best girl, while ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... irregularities which would find no place in daylight. The weary waiting that intervals may be corrected, the hitch with the advance-guard, the difficulty of loading the supply-waggons. The irritability of the chief, growing in intensity as he strikes match after match against his watch dial. Semi-mutinous resistance of orders on the part of Irregulars; lamentations from the major of the battery, whose horses have been standing hooked-in for the last half hour. How impossible it all seems,—how heartbreaking; yet everything shakes down eventually, and the great ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... The dial noted Thursday; and he reminded himself that on that day his friend, Lady Garnett, had a perennial habit of being at home to her intimates, on the list of whom Rainham could acknowledge, without undue vanity, his name occurred high. There was a touch of self-reproach ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... fixed on the large clock placed on a gilded pedestal. It was a master-piece of the period of Louis XV., and adorned in the most brilliant roccoco style. The large dial, with the figures of colored enamel, rested in a frame and case of splendidly-wrought gold, and this was surmounted by a portrait of the Emperor Titus, with the inscription, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... shoal water that the apparatus, in descending, would cause the propeller to make one revolution for every fathom of perpendicular descent, hands provided with the power of self-registering were attached to a dial, and the instrument was complete. It worked beautifully in moderate depths, but failed in blue water, from the difficulty of hauling it up if the line used were small, and from the difficulty of getting it down if the line used were large enough to give the requisite ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... hath reserved to himself and his angels, they will take upon them to foretell, as if stars were immediate, inevitable causes of all future accidents. Caesar Vaninus, in his book de admirandis naturae Arcanis, dial. 52. de oraculis, is more free, copious, and open, in this explication of this astrological tenet of Ptolemy, than any of our modern writers, Cardan excepted, a true disciple of his master Pomponatius; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of silence while the seconds on the red hand of the astral chronometer slipped around the dial. Out on the field, the three ships were pointed toward the darkening afternoon skies. The first ship, nearest the tower, was Wild Bill Sticoon's ship, the Space Lance, painted a gleaming white. Strong could see Tom sitting beside the viewport, and ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... first machine, he took it down to them and exhibited it with pardonable pride. There was a dial on it exactly like a clock, although it ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... the old sun-dial that marked the hours in Warwick Hall garden; a sunny afternoon in May. The usual busy routine of school work was going on inside the great Hall, but no whisper of it disturbed the quiet of the sleepy old garden. At intervals the faint clang ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... her name and age had been entered on her chart, and her height taken, she was told to step on to the weighing machine. Round swung the pointer, and stopped at 8 stone 4 lb. Dr. Mary looked at the dial almost incredulously. She thought there must be something wrong ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... ages that rolled away before the invention of the clock? The first time-measurer was probably a post stuck in the ground, the shadow of which, varying in length and direction, indicated the time of day, whenever the sun was not obscured by clouds. The sun-dial, which was an improvement upon this, was known to the ancient Jews and Greeks. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians possessed an instrument called the Clepsydra (water-stealer), which was merely a ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... though?" gloated Flame. "Well, they've taken this one, anyway! Taken it by storm, I mean! Scratched all the green paint off the front door! Torn a hole big as a cavern in the Barberry Hedge! Pushed the sun-dial through a bulkhead!—If it snows to-night the cellar'll ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... secretary one evening what hour it was. "Sir," replied the secretary, "I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun is set." "Well," quoth M. Gaulard, "and can you not see by ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... struck out or obscured the central facts with which I have been dealing, are not, never were, and, I may presumptuously venture to say, never will be, forces of large account in this world. Here is a clock, beautiful, chased on the back, with a very artistic dial-plate, and works modelled according to the most approved fashion, but, somehow or other, the thing won't go. Perhaps the mainspring is broken. And so it is only the Gospel, as Paul expounds it and expands it in this Epistle, that is 'the power of God unto salvation.' Dear brethren, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of my instruments. When the hand on this dial points to zero I will know that we are beyond the atmosphere, and that it is time to start ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... The more I see the more I am convinced. What is there here to be compared to my temples, and my groves, and my glades? Here a mount and a shrubbery! There a dell concealed by brambles! On your right a statue! On your left an obelisk, and a sun-dial! The obelisk is fixed, yet the dial shews that time is ever flying. Did you ever ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... a transparent veil for a celestial and immortal spirit. She is a soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl." A third American friend was one who could bring tidings of Emerson and Hawthorne—Margaret Fuller of "The Dial," now Countess d'Ossoli, "far better than her writings," says Mrs Browning, "... not only exalted but exaltee in her opinions, yet calm in manner." Her loss, with that of her husband, on their voyage to America deeply affected Mrs Browning. "Was she happy in anything?" asks her sorrowing ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the lamp had blinded Balder to what was beyond it; but, on stepping round it, he was confronted by an old-fashioned upright clock, such as were in vogue upon staircase-landings and in entrance-halls a hundred years ago. With its broad, white, dial-plate, high shoulders, and dark mahogany case, it looked not unlike a tall, flat-featured man, holding himself stiffly erect. But whether man or clock, it was lifeless; the hands were motionless,—there was no sound of human or mechanical heart-beat within though Balder held his yet ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the miniature farm-yard, and the tiny ivy-covered dairy beyond; and just as I was beginning to feel the first qualms of my besetting humiliation, fatigue, Mrs. Mostyn led us round to the garden—a garden with high red walls, and a dial in the meeting-place of the flower-bordered paths; and we sat down in a rustic seat cosily fitted into one sunny corner, just behind a great ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William Henry; all the dead people who have been in the dust so long—even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry—are alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven! And all this for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... weary Space Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing, Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;— Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands Barren and soundless as the measuring sands, Not mark'd by flit of Shades,—unmeaning they As moonlight on the dial of the day! But that is lovely—looks like human Time,— An old man with a steady look sublime, That stops his earthly task to watch the skies; But he is blind—a statue hath such eyes;— Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... older, and shared in the sports of his companions, a strange thing came to pass. Beside the shadow that follows us all in the light, another, like that, but something deeper, began to go with Roger Pierce,—not falling with the other, a dial-mark to show the light that cast it, but capriciously to right or left; on whomever or whatever was nearest him at the moment, there that Shadow lay; and as time crept on, the Shadow pertinaciously crept with it, till it was forever hanging about him, ready to chill with vague terror, or harden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... communicates with a feed-reservoir not shown in the cuts. The cock E, permits of the simultaneous regulation of the entrance of the gas and water. Its position is shown by an index e, passing over a graduated dial, e. From the distributing valve chamber, P squared the pipe, s, leads the mixture of water and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... hemispheres are, as it were, acting the part of galvanometers in appreciating the amount of molecular change which is going on in sensory nerves; and that they record their readings in the mind as faithfully as a galvanometer records its readings on the dial. ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... scriptures give us the most wonderful accounts of divine interference: Animals talk like men; springs gurgle from dry bones; the sun and moon stop in the heavens in order that General Joshua may have more time to murder; the shadow on a dial goes back ten degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is not going to die of a boil; fire refused to burn; water positively declined to seek its level, but stands up like a wall; grains of sand become lice; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... talk of marriage, and must now be in the grounds in open frenzy, or secret satisfaction, it was hard to tell which. Determined to know, determined to speak, I excused myself on some hurried plea, and searched the paths he knew as well as I. At last I came upon him. He was standing near an old dial, where he had more than once seen Eva and me together. He was very pale, deathly pale, it seemed to me, in the faint starlight shining upon that open place; but he greeted me as usual very quietly and with no surprise, almost, in fact, as if ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... common to Tudor times, paved on three sides and planted with formal beds of flowers, the whole surrounded by an ancient wall. The gate was ajar, and pushing it open he passed in, glancing for a moment at the grey weather- beaten sun-dial in the middle of the court which told him it was three-o'clock. For four centuries, at least, that self-same dial had marked the hour in that self-same spot, a silent commentary on the briefness of human existence, as compared with its ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 2. COR'DIAL, a.: cord (i)al having the quality of the heart: hence, hearty, sincere. The noun "cordial" means literally something having the quality of acting on the heart: hence, a stimulating medicine, and in a figurative sense, ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... day. My older brother, a private in my company, spoke warmly of the beautiful Indian summer morning and the sublime scenery round about, and wondered if all of us would ever see the golden orb of day rise again in its magnificence. Little did he think that even then the hour hand on the dial plate of destiny was pointing to the minute of "high noon," when fate was to take him by the hand and lead him away. It was his turn in the detail to go to the rear during the night to cook rations for the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of the young man's death was proved by this recovery of his body. No violence was found upon it. The diamond pin had not been taken from his shirt-bosom, nor the gold watch from his pocket. On the dial of his watch the hands, stopping their movement as the chill of the icy water struck the delicate machinery, had recorded the hour of his death—ten minutes ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... rug in the middle of the floor to expose a massive steel trap door. This he unlocked by twirling the dial of a complicated mechanism. Some years before Tom had constructed beneath his laboratory an impregnable chamber to safeguard his secret plans. He called it his Chest of Secrets, and guarded ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... saloon he made his way, paying no attention to the inert forms scattered here and there. Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish—a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the mentacom's headpiece on his skull and adjusted a simply calibrated control dial when she struck him at the base of his thick neck with the stone, all the force of her supple young ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... to the last, while the glittering hands of the clock were seen in the firelight, creeping swiftly over the dial, and its solemn tick measured off the awful minute on which Elizabeth had agreed with her own soul to go forth on her terrible errand, the wretched woman was compelled to pause in that dim chamber, worse than dead herself, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... numero nisi serenas.' Uncle Samuel, who sits by me, has just been reading the above motto, the inscription on a sun-dial in Venice. It strikes me as having a distant relationship to what I was going to say. I have come to a firm resolution to count no hours but unclouded ones, and to let all others slip out of my memory and reckoning as quickly as ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... play in it. He might be the messenger instead of the Portuguese Jew, in which case he would have papers about his person. If he knew of the cave, others might have the same knowledge, and I had better shift him before they came. I looked at my wrist-watch, and the luminous dial showed that the hour was half ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... top of the clock.' She had not felt that there was anything to fear as once again she set the time that was so nearly at an end for her. Her share of life's hours had been well spent and well enjoyed; with a peaceful and steady hand and tranquil heart she might mark the dial for others whose hours ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... installation can conveniently be tested for soundness by throwing into it, through the meter, a pressure of 12 inches or so of water from the weighted holder, then leaving the inlet cock open, and observing whether the index hand on the lowest dial remains perfectly stationary for a quarter of an hour—movement of the linger again indicating a leak. The search for leaks must never be made with a light; if the pipes are full of air this is ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... part of the body, as is most suitable to the design of its creation; having first made an alteration in the face by its nerves, especially by the pathetic and oculorum motorii actuating its many muscles, as the dial-plate to that stupendous piece of clock-work which shows what is to be expected next from the striking part; not that I think the motion of the spirits in the sensory continued by the impression of the object all the way, as from a finger to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... may serve as a deadener. Above this copper shell there are two identical coils of wire which may, according to circumstances, be coupled in tension or in series, or be employed differentially. Reading is performed either by the aid of a needle moving over a dial, or by means of a mirror, which is not shown in the figure. Finally, there is a lateral scale, R, which carries a magnetized bar, A, that may be slid toward the galvanometer. This magnet is capable of rendering the needle less ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... corresponding position. The point of this gold indicator bends over the edge of the case, round which are set eleven raised points—the stem forms the twelfth. Thus the watch, an ordinary watch with a white dial for the person who sees, becomes for a blind person by this special attachment in effect one with a single raised hour hand and raised figures. Though there is less than half an inch between the points—a ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, "It is ten o'clock: Thus may we see," quoth he, "how the world wags: 'T is but an hour ago since it was nine; And after one hour more 't will be eleven; And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. And then, from ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... conclusions must occupy the same plane. Having acquired a knowledge of the science in its application to the individual, take the broader field, or universal aspect, as it applies to human races, and you will find the rise and fall of nations, empires and families marked upon the celestial dial, and in perfect accord with the influence of the Sun and planets upon Mother Earth, in her various movements. And last, but most important, seek with an earnest desire for truth to learn the relation of those glittering constellations of the shining Zodiac to the human soul and their influence ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... missing on the one side, so on the other is assurance, the Boodah's broad-sides of 19.5-inchers and 9.5-inchers, ninety- two in all, being fired by the hand of Quilter-Beckett, who sits at a table grim with knobs, buttons, dial-faces, in a cabinet near a saloon where Hogarth, Loveday, and five lieutenants are lunching; and where he sits he can hear the band in an alcove rendering for the eaters Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: hear, not heed: for two gunners in each casemate ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... dark frames which were carved to resemble scrolls of foliage. Behind each mirror was stuck either a letter or an old pack of cards or a stocking, while on the wall hung a clock with a flowered dial. More, however, Chichikov could not discern, for his eyelids were as heavy as though smeared with treacle. Presently the lady of the house herself entered—an elderly woman in a sort of nightcap (hastily put on) and a flannel neck wrap. She belonged ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the garden we found a granite boulder shaped somewhat like an egg and nearly five feet long. It was a big thing, and not very shapely; but it came from the soil, and Polly wanted it for the base of her sun-dial. We placed it, big end down, in the mathematical centre of the garden (I insisted on that), and sunk it into the ground to make it solid; then a stone mason fashioned a flat space on the top to accommodate an old brass dial that Polly had found in Boston. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... responded Lester carelessly. "We're not due for any bad weather yet awhile, and I don't think—Whew! but it is low, isn't it?" he exclaimed as he examined the dial of the instrument. "There's something on the way, that's sure. I don't remember the barometer often getting quite as low ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... that it was the result of the modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be called a watch at all—seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the hands were rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley
... booth and closed the door. The phone had no dial. Evidently Seaford, like Whiteside, had no dial system. He started to pick up the receiver and inspiration struck him. If he could imitate the mate ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... jet. Life in Research Establishment 83 went on sedately. The barracks and the married quarters and the residences of the officers were equipped with Mahon-modified machines which laundered diapers perfectly, and with dial telephones which always rang right numbers, and there were police-up machines which took perfect care of lawns, and television receivers tuned themselves to the customary channels for different hours with astonishing ease. Even jet-planes equipped ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... essentially cylindrical—the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now—" He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold—a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. "That is my conception of your ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... him what he wanted without a word. Warren then began gravely to draw a large semicircle, open at the top, and above the semicircular line a pendulum, which fell perpendicularly and touched the circumference at the exact point where on the dial of a clock would be inscribed the figure VI. This done, he wrote on the right- hand side of the pendulum, beginning from the bottom and at the places of the hours V, IV, III, the words Moderate Desires—Great Hopes, Ambition—Unbridled Passion, Mania of Greatness. Then, turning ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... a pretty little watch from her waist, and looked at the dial. Then, suddenly remembering that the watch had been Clement's gift, she took the slender chain from her neck, and handed ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... seeing anything, while the steady church-goers had refreshed the entire system by looking about without listening. And to show the truant people where their duty should have bound them, the haze had been thickening all over the sea, while the sun kept the time on the old church dial. This was spoken of for many years, throughout the village, as a Scriptural token of the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... they left that open hill country and came into a more fertile scene, a high road, which was like an avenue in a gentleman's park, and then the village duck-pond and red homestead, the old gray church, with its gilded sun-dial, marking the hour of six, the gardens brimming over with roses, and as full of sweet odours as those spicy islands which send their perfumed breath to greet the seaman as he sails to the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... early, tap you late, In vain! We get—whatever you may state— Much rain. The Woodpecker of which fools sing Ne'er tapped Half so persistently. Since Spring I've rapped Your fair false dial day by day, And yet The end—whatever you may say Is wet! 'Twas wet in June, and in July Wet too; In August it is wetter. Why, Trust you? Barometer, you false old chap, You bore! I'm no Woodpecker, and I'll ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... the Inns, never. The only popular legend known in relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement's, and importing how the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents of his strong box—for which architectural offence alone he ought to have been condemned to live in it. But, what populace would waste fancy upon such a place, or on ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... astronomical science that the Church which tried to compel Galileo to unsay the truth has been overborne by the growing unbelief of the age, even though our little children are yet taught that Joshua made the sun and moon stand still, and that for Hezekiah the sun-dial reversed its record. As Buckle, arguing for the ...
— Humanity's Gain from Unbelief - Reprinted from the "North American Review" of March, 1889 • Charles Bradlaugh
... infinitely more mysterious as they loomed suddenly out of the darkness, outlined each by myriad faint squares of yellow light. Indefinitely from somewhere a bell boomed the quarter-hour, and Amory, pausing by the sun-dial, stretched himself out full length on the damp grass. The cool bathed his eyes and slowed the flight of time—time that had crept so insidiously through the lazy April afternoons, seemed so intangible in the long spring twilights. Evening after evening the senior singing ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... overhanging. He was obliged to ask Miriam, the eldest girl, to stand on a footstool, and push the clock towards the wall. As she stretched her right arm up just under the little gilt cherub who expanded his wings above the dial, holding the frame with her left, he stepped back a little, and was suddenly struck with the beauty of her attitude. A lovely line it was from the tips of her fingers down to her heel, and the slight strain just lifted the hem of her gown, and showed the whitest of white stockings, and a shapely ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... the Staff, glancing at the Waterbury on the short steel chain. Half-past ten. Would the Dop Doctor turn up to appointment, or had the battle with habit and the deadly craving born of indulgence ended in defeat? As his eyes moved from the dial, they lighted upon ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Bell, The nest of a pigeon is builded well. In summer and winter that bird is there, Out and in with the morning air. I love to see him track the street, With his wary eye and active feet; And I often watch him as he springs, Circling the steeples with easy wings, Till across the dial his shade has pass'd, And the belfry edge is gained at last. 'Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note, And the trembling throb in its mottled throat; There's a human look in its swelling breast, And the gentle curve of its lowly crest; And I ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth |
